The Lost Mountain
A single mountain rises from the plain. All around is dusty desolation.
A portal brought you here; for any chance to escape Her wrath, another must be found.
This puzzle-light text adventure / exploration game was originally created for the 2019 IF Advent Calendar, a collaborative tribute project for the 20th anniversary of the game Planescape: Torment. It then fell through a portal and emerged somewhat later.
In the original plan for this tribute project, each game was to be released one day at a time, with a Twine-based framing story in which the player character travels through a series of portals to escape the Lady of Pain. The other completed games from the IF Advent Calendar project are Advent Door by Andrew Plotkin and The Gateway of the Ferrets by Feneric.
The Lost Mountain is unofficial fan content permitted under the Wizards of the Coast Fan Content Policy. It is freely available to distribute and adapt under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (CC BY-NC). This game is not approved or endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used (e.g. Planescape, Forgotten Realms, etc.) are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Development log
- The Lost Mountain Release 2Sep 22, 2021
Comments
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Hi Fred, I really liked your game. I liked the prose, which stands out for its clarity and capacity for description; the possibility of several different endings, including the death ones; the way in which the feeling of stopped time is transmitted; and, finally, being able to examine practically all the "things" mentioned. The only point that I would have liked to have more complexity is that of the puzzles, even if I know the game is intended as puzzle-light. For example, [LITTLE SPOILER] the way the "right portal" opens is too easy for my taste. As it is, you can make it appear without realizing that you have found the solution. It would have been better, I think, if it would have been necessary to perform a ritual. That might have involved finding a way to translate the dwarf runes.
I have found two errors which I detail below. [LITTLE SPOILERS] When you read the Volume, at 1115 DR, it says "Expoloratory." When "look through massive cylinder", there is a "." leftover at the end of the output. This next one I'm not sure if it's an error, but sounds strange: when you "kill dwarves with dagger", after the description of what you have done, appears "You attack the crucified dwarves with the steel dagger."
Well, that’s all. Thanks for the game!
Manny, thanks very much for your feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to provide suggestions and let me know about those errors. I've tracked down the typo and the stray punctuation in the source code and will make sure those fixes are incorporated into the next update. I'll think about the portal a little bit.
Glad to help ;). My comment about the portal is based on the fact that, in my humble opinion, a good puzzle design is one that does not allow the player to solve the puzzle by chance, without realizing it even. For this reason, I don't like the current solution of the portal, because it is enough to carry an object that is obtained without any inconvenience to open it. But, of course, that has to do with personal taste, I think.
Rather, Fred, I wanted to ask you, if you would be so kind, to answer two questions: 1) Is there a way to go through the mine passages or is it just a nod to Adventure? 2) In "Amusing things", you say that you can ask the skeleton about things, but, when I have tried, it does not give me more than a generic answer. Rather, the statue is the one who has several different answers. I am missing something?
You are right that the mine passages part is just a goof on the maze in Adventure. Likewise, asking or telling the skeleton about something is a single-joke response; the statue is the only one that has varied responses. I would encourage you to ask the statue about lots of topics, and tell me if there are any you can think of for which there should be better answers.
I've thought for a long time about the exit portal in the Great Altar; I was influenced by Doug Egan's Afflicted and similar games where you can just leave at any time, should you want to. I'm still learning about good puzzle design, so I'll have to think about how to make puzzles for my next game that are both satisfying and fit with my conception of how the story should play out.
Thanks for the answers. I think that the replies of the statue are well done, and they contribute to create that feeling of solitude that surrounds the whole environment. I think those little details add a special touch to the adventure.
Regarding the puzzles: fair enough. I do not know Afflicted. I'll play it once I'm done with Deadline, which I started today. In fact, I'm a relative newcomer to text adventures. I am more familiar with graphic adventures. Maybe that's where my most "gamey" view of puzzles comes from.
If anything, I really enjoyed The Lost Mountain. Nice to see a game in the universe of Planescape (Planescape: Torment is one of the most interesting RPGs I've ever played). I look forward to your future projects.